Marianne Boruch: Charm (January 2015)

Which might be scary dark or sudden light; charm as accident or willed thing, a delight or semi-toxic in poems and beyond. Cast also into this lecture is metaphor (what is it really?), flying babies, brain-washed bedazzled snakes, an insect in the ear, the first person to write poems in English (that would be the dreaming Caedmon), the quark called Charm, a cello lesson, and other mysteries. An eyeglass is put to poems by James Tate, Charles Simic, Laura Jensen, Louis MacNiece.